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Notes -
Reuters Poll: Republicans and Democrats reversed on recognition for Palestine State and crediting Trump for hypothetical peace.
The statehood recognition phrasing annoyingly does not define a hypothetical Palestinian state. "If peace efforts are successful, Trump deserves significant credit" surprised me, a little, since Democrats didn't shy away from giving Trump credit for Operation Warp Speed, so you have to wonder whether this is signalling or policy disagreement with current peace proposals. On the one hand, there's no shortage of anti-Trump signalling. On the other, even more Democrats agreed with the statement "The United States should recognize Palestine as a country," so it's very possible the sample had a lot of Democrats who think hypothetical near-term peace would be in spite of US foreign policy, not because of it. I don't think this is logical, given the prior state of the conflict, but it doesn't need to be logical for people to think it. The non-partisan takeaway from the poll, so far as I can tell, is that "The United States should recognize Palestine as a country" is close to non-partisan, with only 53% of Republicans opposed and 58% and 59% agreement from "Other" and "All adults," respectively.
That is not remotely what non-partisan means. Non-partisan statements are stuff like "the US should have a military", "the US should have a market-based economy", "raping kids should be illegal". Close-to-non-partisan statements would be "minorities and women should have the franchise". Basically, stuff with which perhaps twice the Lizardmen constant would disagree. 59% is not closely that. You might as well call stricter gun laws a non-partisan issue as 56% support them.
Also, it is not clear to me what the purpose of recognizing a state is. First and foremost, states exist through the ability to use coercion, force. This is completely orthogonal to any concept of legitimacy. Even if I believe that the Matriarchal Commune of Afghanistan is the legitimate, that does not matter one bit if the Taliban hold Afghanistan and nobody contests them for it.
At the end of the day, in international politics, you have to deal with the facts on the ground, even if you do not like them. The test if a subgroup in a state is a state or not is actually very simple: Can they, through persuasion or force of arms defend their claims to territory? Of course, not every entity which meets this threshold will be internationally recognized, sometimes they will just be seen as a rebel group.
Israel will not suffer any Palestinian entity to have weapons which could effectively oppose them, which is quite reasonable given the history of the conflict. No other country which could oppose Israel is willing to have their soldiers die trying to defend the West Bank from the IDF.
The more appropriate way to react to Nethanyahu's aggression is to stop giving him military aid and sanction him.
Also, all of that is moot because the US will be the last country to recognize Palestine except for Israel. For most of your 59% who want recognition, that is not their most important issue. By contrast, there is a lobby group for which support for Israel is the main reason for existence. A candidate might gain a bit of approval by being anti-Bibi, but once the attack ads come in, that will flip around completely.
I... thought "non-partisan" just means "not divided by party lines", so something equally supported, equally opposed, or roughly equally controversial, would indeed be "non-partisan"
I was a bit confused too, but they’re pointing out that 59% is more partisan than gun control.
59% to 56% doesn't measure partisanship, though. The significance of the 59% in
isn't that 59% of "all adults" agree with that statement, it's that the difference between the % of "all adults" and the % of Republicans is small (not trivially so, but in this context, I think 53% to 59% would generally be considered significant but small). So, to say that gun control is "less partisan" than this because it only has 56% support would require also providing information that shows that Republicans and Democrats both cluster pretty closely around 56% support (though what counts as "small" becomes even more arguable when crossing the 50% threshold), more closely than the 53% to 59% difference in the Palestine example.
quiet_NaN seems to be making the same point that VoxelVexillologist does above, that "non-partisan" doesn't just mean "not partisan" but has an additional, extended meaning that has little to do with partisanship, meaning "generally agreed upon."
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